Hi, all. I've already posted this to the DAZ Studio forum, but I have no frame of reference to how well my plea for help will be received there, and I'm more familiar with the crew here. So I hope you don't mind me posting in both places. I'm at a standstill with the DAZ skeleton. I've gotten it to load in D|S, and I've managed to find the textures, but that's as far as I've gotten. My goal, obviously, is to get the skeleton posed and those fantastic textures assigned, either on the front end or in Bryce. I don't know how to go about this. Anyone with experience in getting Skeleton to Bryce? I did, incidentally, try to render using 3delight within DAZ, and the textures didn't show up, which didn't surprise me too much, knowing that with Renderman renderers you have to use a shader called supertexmap, normally, to use bitmap texture. Are these even bitmap textures? Is there a way to do what I'm needing? Am I making any sense at all??? Thanks for your time and any assistance anyone may render.

Once you have the Textures applied to the skeleton just hit the Bryce Icon button or the X at the top right Corner and the skeleton should Port over to Bryce 5.5... HTH...

Oppps forgot to ask if you were using Bryce 5.5 or...?

Yes, 5.5. I can't seem to find the Bryce icon button in DAZ Studio, however. Hmm.

AHA! OK, here's what I did. First, I launched DAZ Studio from Bryce 5.5. I then loaded the skeleton and, though I can't tell from the preview, I think I assigned the texture. The Bryce button you were talking about appeared when launching from Bryce, so that was cool. Now I'm rendering to see if the texture ported over, too. It doesn't seem to have worked. >8-( Got the skeleton automatically, but the texture didn't come with it.

Hmmmmm...

All I can figure is there are one of two things happening: 1. Texture doesn't port over or, 2. I'm somehow not assigning textures properly from within DAZ Studio. Do these seem like reasonable assertions? We can eliminate No. 1 if you or anyone else has had no difficulties getting textures AND model to port from DAZ Studio in the past.

It would be helpful if you said how exactly you're assigning the texture. Surface -> Choose texture?

I imported the Skeleton into Bryce from D|S when I first bought it (whenever the new version came out, plus a few days). The only problem I had was killing my computer because the resolution of the texture was so high. Unfortunately I'm rendering at the moment, but it can be done (I just can't remember how).

Try this: Open the Sufaces pane from the top Windows menu. Click the button at the top of this window and hit the "plus" (+) icon next to the Skeleton to open it's hierarchy. Select a body part. This will show the Diffuse color and if a tex map is applied it'll show up in the 2nd button. If it says "none", click it and apply the tex map. If the tex map is there and not getting to Bryce it's a bug. To add a bump map, select the Advanced tab and scroll down to the bump map section.

OK, here is the screen capture of what I've got up and running. I tried to jam in everything, so the list to left is just the top few items, and, whereas I tried, I could not get a screen capture showing that there is no check mark beside either of the texture types by "diffuse." I even tried clicking on "none." No dice. Now, are the skeleton textures bitmap textures? If so, I cannot seem to find them anywhere in the content folder. I have double clicked the appropriate texture to the left and have also tried clicking "import" from the menu. There seems to be no change, certainly not in the preview. I'm not sure what else to do. It was asked "how" I had applied textures. I tried it in texture select mode and the default mode, too. I just don't seem to be able to get the texture to assign.

Quick question, did you purchase the textures to go with the skeletons? I ask as they weren't part of the skeletons package, but a seperate purchase. The skeleton product page makes it look like they are part of the package, but they're not.

That's an annoying habit that DAZ has. They do the same thing with Vicki and Micky (fortunately I got them free =P); I wish that they would just either include the textures as part of the package, or else show the demo pix without textures. Obviously including them as part of the package is the best way to go of these two choices, but either way I think that the sales would go down. Still, it's better than effectively lying by implication to their customers. =(

Woohoo. Got a rendering. Interestingly, there are some issues I'm dealing with. Yes, I have the textures, but I'm beginning to wonder if I even have the right skeleton on my home computer. I downloaded all the same stuff, I thought, but I may be wrong. I am at the office now. I updated everything today. I called up the DAZ skeleton, and, voila! Perfect, texture applied easy as pie. No issues going back to Bryce. All is well. And I thank you all immensely. Now, because I am a giften annoyer, I do have one more question, and I'm not sure how to resolve it. One of the skeletons says "conforming" and that's the one I was able to use. The other skeleton has these odd positioning rings. I'll post another one to show you what I mean...

What are these rings for, exactly? I notice that, if I try to delete them, the whole figure disappears. They export, along with the figure, to Bryce. If I ungroup and try to delete them in Bryce, the whole figure disappears. Any clarification regarding this will be most appreciated. Thanks again, all of you, you have helped me learn a great deal about DAZ Studio.

The conforming skeleton is what you would use in Poser4/Pro-Pack if you wanted to put the skeletons inside Mike/Vicki 3. You would load M/V3 and then the skeleton and conform it to the figure like you would with clothing. The rings are helper rings in Poser/DAZ Studio to help you see where body parts are when posing. There should be MAT poses to turn them off in the same folder as the texture MAT poses. Apply the Transparent MAT pose when you have finished posing the skeleton to make the rings invisible.

Muchas gracias. Have been having way too good a time with the results I'm now having. I actually got around to loading the DAZ Studio content, and now even have a rendering of my very first naked Vicky, but she's translucent, with skeleton showing through. And I would not even have thought of this if you hadn't mentioned the conforming skeleton. Too, too cool. Truly. These look great, and, whereas I'm sure you've all done this stuff before, I'm actually having a good time.

OK, the requisite "naked vicky." Now on to reflective spheres over water. >;]